Sunday, January 24, 2010

Hansen's numbers

James Hansen of NASA has been relatively free of criticism related to the CRU. I believe he is not even mentioned in the e-mails, and he has rushed to assure everyone that he has a set of temperature data that confirms global warming and is independent of all the ... not fraud, but unpleasantness.

McIntyre, with his usual thoroughness, is now going through NASA e-mails. McIntyre noted that the way numbers were calculated changed in the year 2000. Staff inside responded as if this was a four-alarm fire. Hansen took charge and:

1. Made sure McIntyre was not given credit for the discovery that he actually made2. Changed all pre-2000 numbers, instead of post-2000 ones, while denying that he had done that.3. Let everyone see that 1934 was now the hottest year, and then claimed falsely that this had always been in his reports.

The massive changes in NASA data were made with no real transparency for users of the data--any more than their original creation was transparent. Hansen acts like he's got something to hide, and this seems to indicate that even official 20th century temperature data is suspect.